The chapter on the Arabs in Cantor's book begins as follows...

The chapter on the Arabs in Cantor's book begins as follows: “That a people who for centuries together were closed to all the cultural influences from their neighbors, who themselves did not influence others during all this time, who then all of a sudden imposed their faith, their laws, and their language on other nations to an extent which has no parallel in history-all this is such an extraordinary phenomenon that it is worthwhile to investigate its causes.

At the same time we can be sure that this sudden outburst of intellectual maturity could not have originated of itself.” Laboring under this fixed idea, Cantor proceeds to attribute almost every­thing done by the Muslim scholars to the Greeks and other nations. We must confess that this kind of argument introduces an extremely dangerous principle in historical research, and can be employed only by one who is predisposed to demolish an exalted and established reputation.

If Cantor had really investigat­ed the cause of the “sudden outburst of intellectual maturity” of the Arabs, he would have realized that it was primarily due to the revolution caused by Islam in the whole outlook of the people.

We have elsewhere described the attitude of Islam towards knowledge.[^1] By making it incumbent upon the believer to acquire knowledge and by enjoining upon him to observe and to think for himself, Islam created an unbounded enthusiasm for acquiring knowledge amongst its followers. The result of this revolution can be best described in the words of Florian Cajori, who says in his History of Mathematical Notation: “The Arabs present an extraordinary spectacle in the history of civilization.

Unknown, ignorant, and disunited tribes of the Arabian Peninsula, untrained in government and war, are, in the course of ten years, fused by the furnace-blast of religious enthusiasm into a powerful nation, which in one century extends its dominion from India across northern Africa to Spain.

A hundred years after this grand march of conquest, we see them assume the leadership of intellectual pursuits; the Muslims become the great scholars of their time.” It is under this stimulus of the Islamic injunction for acquiring more and more knowledge that the Arabs and other Muslim peoples turned to the learn­ing of the various branches of knowledge, preserving and improving upon the heritage left by preceding civilizations and enriching every subject to which they turned their attention.